ATLANTA – While there’s been an uptick of COVID-19 cases heading into the fall, help is on the way, Dr. Mandy Cohen, the new director of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday. A new booster shot will be available as early as next week, Cohen said at a luncheon at downtown Atlanta’s Commerce Club hosted by the Atlanta Press Club.

ATLANTA – A Korean automotive parts company will build a manufacturing plant in Metter to supply Georgia’s Kia facility and the new electric vehicles plant under construction west of Savannah, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Wednesday. DAS Corp. will invest more than $35 million in the project, which will create 300 jobs.

ATLANTA (AP) — A 24-year-old man died at an Atlanta hospital after being found unresponsive at a jail that is already being investigated by federal authorities for potential civil rights violations. A Fulton County Jail officer found Shawndre Delmore during a routine check just before 8:30 p.m. Aug. 31, the county sheriff's office said in a news release Wednesday. Jail staff attempted to revive Delmore until medical staff arrived, and he was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he died Sept. 3, the release says.

MACON, Ga. (AP) — Officials in middle Georgia's largest city are mandating that bars close at 2 a.m., an hour earlier than currently allowed, saying they believe an earlier closing time will reduce late-night crime. Macon-Bibb commissioners voted 5-4 on Tuesday in favor of earlier closings.

ATLANTA (AP) — Sixty-one people have been indicted in Georgia on racketeering charges following a long-running state investigation into protests against a proposed police and training facility in the Atlanta area that critics call “Cop City.” In the sweeping indictment, prosecutors allege the defendants are “militant anarchists” who have supported a violent movement that prosecutors trace to the widespread 2020 racial justice protests.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The Georgia Ports Authority will donate $6 million in coming years to improve affordable housing options in Savannah and neighboring communities, officials said Tuesday. The cash infusion to the Savannah Affordable Housing Fund will be the largest outside contribution to the fund since its founding 12 years ago, city officials said in a news release.

DULUTH, Georgia (AP) — Five people were killed and three more injured in a Labor Day crash along a Georgia interstate northeast of Atlanta, authorities said. The three-vehicle collision happened shortly before 4 a.m. Monday on a ramp to the southbound lanes of Interstate 85 in the Duluth area, Gwinnett County police said in a statement.

JONESBORO, Ga. (AP) — Police in Georgia on Saturday shot and killed a 17-year-old boy they said killed a police dog and pointed a gun at officers, authorities said. The Clayton County Police Department identified the teenager as Stephon Ford, 17. Assistant Police Chief Bruce Parks told news outlets that officers were trying to apprehend Ford, who was suspected of firing a gun at officers and killing a police dog earlier in the day. Parks said officers shot and killed Ford after he pointed a gun at them.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution said Thursday they will spend an additional $2 billion and hire an extra 400 workers to make batteries at the automaker’s sprawling U.S. electrical vehicle plant that’s under construction in Georgia. The announcement by the South Korea-based companies — one a major automaker, the other a leading producer of lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles — expands on a partnership they launched three months ago to produce batteries at the same site west of Savannah, where Hyundai plans to start EV production in 2025.

ATLANTA (AP) — Residential customers of Georgia's largest electrical utility could see their bills rise $9 more a month to pay for a new nuclear power plant under a deal announced Wednesday. Georgia Power Co. said customers would pay $7.56 billion more for Plant Vogtle construction costs under the agreement with utility regulatory staff.

ABBEVILLE, Ga. (AP) — A central Georgia sheriff responding to a call for service was killed when his car went off the road, hit a tree and overturned, authorities said. Wilcox County Sheriff Robert Rodgers died Tuesday afternoon after the crash on Highway 233, north of Rochelle and about 75 miles south of Macon, Coroner Janice Brown told WGXA-TV. Rodgers, 52, has been sheriff in Wilcox County since 2016.

VALDOSTA, Ga. — Hurricane Idalia arrived in Georgia as a Category 1 storm with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph Wednesday morning, bringing heavy rains, toppling trees, knocking out power, and causing lowland flooding. First responders in southern Georgia used boats to rescue some residents stranded by localized flooding. Utility crews worked throughout the day to restore power in hard-hit areas.

ATLANTA (AP) — An Atlanta-area hospital system has completed its takeover of Augusta University's hospitals, with the University System of Georgia and Wellstar Health system saying the deal promises greater financial stability, more medical training and better care.

ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp issued a State of Emergency order covering the entire state as Georgia prepares for Hurricane Idalia. Storm tracking predicts the storm to make landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast Wednesday morning, and travel across northern Florida, South Georgia and coastal South Carolina before heading back out into the Atlantic Ocean.

ATLANTA – A Korean automotive supplier will build a manufacturing facility in West Point to serve the nearby Kia plant and other automakers, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Tuesday. Daesol Ausys will invest $72 million in the project and create more than 140 jobs.

Frank “Sonny” Seiler, an attorney who owned the University of Georgia's famed line of “Uga” bulldog mascots and served as lead defense counsel in a notorious case that was chronicled in the book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” died Monday. He was 90.

ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp has activated the State Operations Center ahead of the anticipated midweek landfall of Tropical Storm Idalia in southeastern Georgia. The storm is expected to strengthen as it moves through the eastern Gulf of Mexico and make landfall in Florida’s Big Bend area as a Category 3 hurricane Wednesday morning. It then is expected to weaken to a Category 1 hurricane as its center moves into far southeastern Georgia later on Wednesday.

ATLANTA -- As summer comes to an end and thousands of Georgians hit the road to celebrate the Labor Day holiday, the Georgia Department of Public Safety reminds motorists that Georgia State Patrol (GSP) troopers and Motor Carrier Compliance Division (MCCD) officers will conduct highly visible patrols on interstates and secondary roads, looking for unsafe behaviors that put travelers at risk.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — A New York man will serve three months in prison for making threatening phone calls to Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Joseph Morelli, 51, was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Syracuse after pleading guilty in February to threatening Greene in several calls to her Washington, D.C., office in 2022.

ATLANTA – The Georgia Department of Transportation has reopened a seven-mile stretch of westbound Interstate 16 north of Soperton after repairing a bridge over Pendleton Creek. The highway was closed earlier this month after a routine inspection found some of the supports holding up the bridge had settled.

MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia sheriff pleaded guilty to groping TV judge Glenda Hatchett during a law enforcement conference last year and resigned from office Monday. Bleckley County Sheriff Kristopher Coody pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of sexual battery in Cobb County State Court, news outlets reported. Hatchett addressed the court, saying the ordeal had “cut me to the core.”

ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate is working to come to grips with the ramifications of the growth in artificial intelligence technology for public policy. Two Senate committees announced plans Monday to hold a joint hearing on AI this fall. The Public Safety and Science and Technology committees will take up the issue at the state Capitol on Nov. 1.

ATLANTA – A federal court judge has handed both sides in a lawsuit over a controversial election reform bill the General Assembly passed two years ago a partial victory and a partial defeat. Judge J.P. Boulee granted a preliminary injunction Friday to civil rights and voting rights groups temporarily blocking portions of Senate Bill 202 that restricted volunteers from providing food and water to voters waiting in long lines at the polls.

ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia school board voted Thursday to fire a teacher after officials said she improperly read a book on gender fluidity to her fifth grade class. The Cobb County School Board in suburban Atlanta voted 4-3 to fire Katie Rinderle, overriding the recommendation of a panel of three retired educators. The panel found after a two-day hearing that Rinderle had violated district policies, but said she should not be fired.

ATLANTA (AP) — Rosalynn Carter will celebrate her 96th birthday at home Friday with her husband, former President Jimmy Carter, and other family members, while the surrounding community of Plains, Georgia, honors the former first lady's years of public health advocacy. The latest milestone comes as Rosalynn Carter navigates dementia and the former president, now 98, continues to receive hospice care.